the genius of Norman Rockwell

The irony is that Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime.

Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life.

This has led to the often-deprecatory adjective, "Rockwellesque". I disagree. 

Rockwell was an anthropologist of his time.